But the article (well, the quoted message) says it's "Kontour," and it sounds like that's the decision of the author...
vektor / veKtor would have been a cool choice, though -- then KDE project folks could sue Adobe for infringing on their intuhlektural prahpuhty whenever they refer to their product as a "vector-based drawing program."
"The distinguishing feature of wearables is that you can use them without taking them out of whatever you carry them in. Palms are designed to be always with you, but not always usable; you can't see where you're going and they take both hands."
OK, good point, but in the case of the charmed-in-a-bag, I still see this as "less wearable" than most other wearables because it's less integral to the wearer's body, more like a purse with a laptop. Yes, the IO is outside, and I agree that's the most important thing, but a bag that you have to drape over the back of your chair or whatever is a lot different (not worse, hey, I might prefer it) than one that's *attached* to you, even in the way that a vest like the MIThril is attached to you.
The MIThril project has taken one tack with the wearable possibilities (integrating it into clothing) that most wearable projects have not. They clip on (Xybernaut), sit on back (the CMU one whose name I forget), or even become barely semi-wearable by being carried in a bag (charmed). (Still nice machines and all, just that I think "wearable" is a stretch as a distinguishing name for something not that much different from carrying around a Sony picturebook.)
The vest approach might seem strange and limiting compared to the more separately worn ones (hey, it might be warm for a vest, right?) but in reality, all the wearables available right now need batteries (lots of juice) and communications (bluetooth and similar aren't really widespread enough or useful enough), and it's all got to go *somewhere*;)
If it was a light enough mesh, a vest really might not be as limiting as I used to picture it, and by placing the stuff around a user's torso (usually adjudged pretty important to the user!) it probably gets more protection than it looks, just from natural self protection.
as computing power gets cheaper, GPS and other technologies spread, that vest could become a lot lighter, too. Now if only there were/good/ input systems (not sure what they would consist of, in truth, but the current choices are all Lesser Evils with some interesting compromises to choose among), I would love one of these for everyday use. Palm device is the answer for now, I suppose;)
OK, I give! Sorry to start out like the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons, that was uncivil and uncalled for. Someone else in this same thread (can't find now -- moderated too low?) seemed to say exactly what I *thought* (falsely) that you were saying, and I had a little knee jerk reaction of my own. (You should have seen my response before I tried to make it non-inflammatory;))
Mea culpa, and I apologize for the 8th-grade crack. I rather liked getting out of 8th grade myself (not a bad year, except for math class, really, but boy did I have some bad teachers), though you had a better vacation afterward from the sound of it.
wrong. "Spoof" isn't a new word -- so you have it backwards; in fact, it's one word you can *directly* blame on the "popular
culture," and its specialized use in computer security etc. is an application of its long-held meaning to a particular
circumstance.
Dictionary.com (fount of wisdom for we poor spellers) says "Sometime in the 19th century Arthur Roberts
(1852-1933) invented
a game called Spoof, which involved trickery and nonsense. The first recorded reference to the game in 1884 refers to its
revival. It was not long
before the word spoof took on the general sense "nonsense, trickery," first recorded in 1889. The verb spoof is first recorded
in 1889 as well, in the sense "to deceive.""
You seem to have a certain, context-specific meaning stuck in your head. Fine. Words can have lots of context-specific meanings (check
out the word "punk" for instance -- "The punk lit the punk, punk!"), but by having special meanings in some small corner of the world,
they don't lose their larger, more general meanings.
In the context of this article, it would be entirely accurate to use the word "spoof" to describe a user faking age or location to get
around the restrictions NV would like to impose.
Whether that's (morally) right or not is up to you, but jeesh, why the knee-jerk reaction? Hope you had a nice graduation
from 8th grade, sorry about how you always got picked on, why take it out on people with a middlin' vocabulary?
simon
p.s.: Unless I misinterpreted what you were trying to say here, in which case forget it and laugh it off.:)
Re:editorial bias (huh?) games v. "multimedia clip
on
Myst III: Exile Review
·
· Score: 1
I dunno, seems like CmdrTaco has frequenly mentioned playing games on his windows partitions, Hemos too, and complaining that more games aren't available for linux. Fair enough, no?
But "multimedia clips that were related to submissions" is something else -- maybe they didn't want those becuase they are unuseable for most people? (OS aside -- most people are on dialup.) They don't link to a lot of MPEG clips either, no matter how universal they are, right?
Reviewing games seems more like reviewing books and not parallel to "multimedia clips." I hate people sending attachments without asking, and I'd hate to have stories here link to a lot of multimedia files that would take forever to download. Maybe in a separate section ("Slashdot for High bandwidth"?) that would be good, but considering all the various parody songs, flash files etc that spring up, I think/. shows remarkable restraint by *not* linking to them and sticking with what even lowly dialup users can see.
Games for the most part get purchased like books do, and bandwidth / usability-over-the-net is not such a limiting factor. Seems OK to me.
(and I don't play games much either, but I like to see them reviewed here;))
I don't run any servers (including Napster) on my machines right now, because of bandwidth, really, but also because I am afraid that my ISP (just one of the many which are now all part of Earthlink) will one day enforce its ToS re: servers. I'm online enough hours that I have drawn their tightlipped little notes before about it, and they hint that they think I'm running a server, so... anyhow, keep my nose clean.
This clearly functions as a server, albeit one which it seems would probably *reduce* overall congestion (am I right on that?).
Anyone have constuctive / instructive experiences re: ToS with servers and dialup ISPs? This is one of the first things I've seen which tempts me to risk it;)
Cheers,
simon
p.s. oh, and the cola? It's not that bad. Sweet, but not disgustingly so like "Big Red" and certain others. Quite drinkable, and no stranger than Coke or coffee would be to someone who's tasted neither one.
... is that one day MS will need to create versions of its software for Linux;) (Or, insert your favorite Free, source-not-secret operating system -- "Word for Hurd"?)
If they don't, they will grow increasingly irrelevant. A decade? Three? Who knows! But a system built on keeping software secret, expensive, and always on the brink of expiry can only last in the absence of valid alternatives.
Those alternatives have not only arrived, but keep stripping off masks of perceived difficulty or non-intuitive design. (I say masks because I think they're mostly silly lip-wiggling, just the conventional wisdom repeated as Deep Conviction by the uninformed -- there are *no* really great, easy, attractive SW systems for the general user anyhow.)
Q: "Here, Sir -- a free, tiny non-polluting nuclear reactor you can keep forever and modify as you see fit, and even duplicate for others under certain reasonable terms. Enjoy! Is that OK?"
A: "Uhh, coal is better, and you are bad. All your base. American Way."
the LED readout of the fluid temperature that librarygeek mentions is cool -- (or is it really LCD?). Either way, that should be a standard part of a decent case.
In fact, I'd like to see an LCD with a numeric output, and with a (green / yellow / orange / red) quad-bank of LEDS beneath it, for (easy / questionable / dangerous / stupid) temperature levels.
remember, there should be more LEDs, everywhere and in everything:) Matter of fact, that's the chief reason I would like to one day acquire a BeBox -- those dancing LEDs are worth more than the machine's current processing-power-money ratio.
Just like in a car, there isn't a true conflict between dummy lights and gauges -- please give us both!:)
well, Mandrake now ships with KDE 2, which includes konqui, and it's the default browser under KDE.
I thought RH had KDE2 as well... how much more mainstream can it get?:)
simon
Peter Dyck said "Government consists of people who have to think about getting re-elected every four to eight years. It's a form of mutual assured destruction. Politicians who screw with us won't get elected the next time."
Well, in theory maybe. But consider that Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were both overwhelmingly reelected; probably most people who voted (or would have voted) for one of these guys probably would consider the other to be objectionable. Result? All screwed, all the time, news at 11.
Ted Kennedy (Oh, Ted) continues to be elected time after time despite -- and this is not what I'd like on my resume, but I guess for the Senate they have different admissions standards -- *drowing his date by driving off a bridge drunk*. You have to be at least 1 generation away from JFK laterally to actually come to trial for such things, evidently. (The laundry list of crimes and other objectionable acts committed by the current batch of miscreants in D.C. could make TV evangelism seem like a den of saints... every time one of those jerks double parks or blocks an ambulance entry with no penalty, the rest of us are belittled while they laugh; that several have been credibly accused or rape and other violent crimes but not touched because of their office is even worse.)
Probably you have a "favorite" politician or two who clearly spends more time screwing (in whichever sense you find makes sense) than doing good, and gets elected again anyhow.
Electability is different from good done in office, by a very long way. Bread and circuses.
Added to which, most FCC and other agency bureacrats (the word may be pejorative, but I can think of no better one, and heck, I *mean* it pejorative!) aren't tied to the election cycle anyhow. Some of the top posts are, and there's a trickle down effect, but most Federal workers don't become unemployed based on the election cycle. Maybe they should -- we could require politicians to run on a ticket basis that goes beyond President and VP -- entire complete-government teams would be required, with a sudden-death phase, too. But as it stands, only the few offices near the top are true political appointments, and in some cases, even they survive administrations. They do know the ropes, (the ties that bind, so to speak).
And on Boycotts? Bus boycotts in Alabama which hastened desegregation. Not only that, but a bit like brandishing a weapon rather than actually firing it, sometimes a boycott only needs to exert enough pressure to win it's point, not bring the company to its knees. 7-11 no longer carries porn (thanks / no thanks -- your pick) thanks to long-term boycotts by religious groups. It's been a while, and 7-11 still doesn't carry 'em. I bet the boycotters could claim that as a victory. When's the last time a boycott against government worked? (And corporations don't draft people and send them to shoot people they might not be inclined to shoot, or send people to jail for possessing a marijuana seed... heck, I bet the local quickie mart would love to sell you a 5-pack of marijuana cigarettes legally, let's say $10 for a nice package of guaranteed-quality pot, with lung-saving filter... I digress.)
my much longer reply just got wiped out by a segfault, so this one is shorter for my own sanity and that of the reader;)
- jamie mccarthy said "no sane company would lessen its stranglehold of control anyway, unless forced to by the government."
Maybe, but doesn't that power-seeking also apply to the government? The U.S. govt. is one of the most liberal (old sense) on earth, in fact the U.S. govt in fact probably comes closer than any other I can think of as perhaps an adequate / worthwhile one to regulate broadcasting. But consider that this government (no not a monolith, but enough of a coherent whole I think it bears this abuse fairly) loves to spy on its own citizens at several levels (and always pushes to expand this little privilege), violently apprehends the use and users of *certain* recreational substances, and speaking of radio, threatens stations whose content the FCC doesn't like with license withdrawal, fines, etc.
In effect, the big corporations already own the airwaves (since they can afford lawyers, licenses, transmitters) with some small and carefully allowed exceptions, because the FCC is establishmentarian as any govt agency. Despite a few years of softer talk on it, the FCC still raids and confiscates the equipement of even tiny stations transmitting in local dead air and thus not interfering with anyone else's broadcast. (that's maybe my favorite illustrative evil deed of the FCC -- not only pointless, but destructive of liberty and a great discouragement to involvement.) Authority likes to assert itself and grow, the arrogance of power, etc etc.
More important -- But what about in countries like... oh, Albania, North Korea, etc? Not that the FCC has dominion there;) but they demonstrate why the government ought not be the real owner ("steward" isn't how I'd describe them) of the airwaves. Radio should be as unregulated as practical in the U.S. and other relatively free places for the same reason it should be but isn't in the obviously un-free places. *That's* where there are actual strangleholds on content that go beyond priggishness and artifical "two sides of story" dichotomies.
Wouldn't it be nice if one (or better, two or three!) of the horrible corporations would start broadcasting news, music and weather on the eights with updates on the hour in... Tibet, say, or Havana? I think so, but I may be crazy.
And there are anti-monopoly laws, total-power output rules etc that there's no reason to think would be changed by this (whatever you think of those laws, heh); Basically this little privatization plan sounds like trading one form of govt/private radio system (the current one) for a slightly more free market one, rather than declaring radio anarchy outright, gutting small children who stand in the way, etc.
simon
p.s. secondary motivation would be to wake up, turn on radio, hear "... shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits... and 'tits' doesn't even belong on the list!", smile, and say "now you can say them on the radio!"
That Clawhammer will be smaller than a P4 sounds nice, but not all that relevant to me in the near future (trying to be more trailing edge than bleeding edge in the interest of my wallet of late;)).
What does interest me is the idea that the equivalent to today's highest-end-and-beyond chips will be be smaller packages. OK, ok, that's an obvious point given the March of Progress thus far, right? But when it comes to *lower* powered devices, this is particularly cool, because they're going to be even smaller.
Remember, the power in an iPaq handheld would have been the Computer Buyer's Holy Grail not long ago, and it's only in comparison with the amazingly powerful processors available lo even at WalMart that it appears wimpy. Not long from now, you will be able to buy a computer over the salesperson's objection that "b-b-b-b-but that's only the power equivalent of a Pentium 4 at 3 Ghz! You'll never get Office 2004 to run on *that*!"
Really, though I like the convenience of the various plug-in buses of desktop PCs, I really wish my PC case could be more the size of a laptop, and getting processors, motherboards, etc smaller would be a nice step toward (at least household) ubiquity.
these reviews paired is interesting in part because one is (uhh....) RH-based;) and the other is Debian-based.
A few years ago, and barring Slackware, it seemed liked all commercial distros were based on Red hat, and probably most still are.
Are we at an inflection point? Now at least 4 slick commericial distros have emerged that are based on Debian: Corel (ick, though that's based on the first version); Stormix (deceased 2001, alas); Progeny (looks good to me, but haven't run); LibraNet... (are there more?)
Maybe the convenience of apt-get will win over the current dominance of RPMs; if Mandrake and RH weren't now RPM compatible again (allegedly) I would see that happening even faster. (And mandrake's cooker thing even *has* apt-get...)
'"Free software is about freedom, not price. Free software means that users have certain freedoms, such as the freedom to redistribute and change the software. To charge for a copy is legitimate; this is just as true for downloading as for a CD-ROM." ""
Yadda yadda... IMHO it's also perfectly legal to pay 15$, download the distro and redistribute it for free.'
Well yes, it is!:) In fact, they'd probably be happy for you to do so, if only to get more people to see their distribution. But for downloading it from one site (theirs, that is), they want some return on the bills they pay for bandwidth and servers etc. You can provide a mirror of GPL'd software and you aren't *required* to charge people for it. But there are costs associated with it, and they're trying to recoup... if it helps them stay in business (who knows?) then it sounds like a good thing.
(that'd be anothe r good one to see some more reviews of.)
that's "better debian than debian" and with the approval / leadership / etc. of Ian Murdoch -- so what more could you want?:) Without him, they'd have to just call it Deb!
It would be an interesting kink in the graph if debian-based distros start to actually dominate. Even the fact that there *are* multiple debian-based distros is an intersting kink in the graph.
simon
finally a movie that belongs here!
on
Review: The Dish
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· Score: 4
This is a cool review to see on slashdot! I'm not a huge fan of the Hollywood fare that Katz somtimes does his damnedest to find a "geek" element... and I'm even less of a fan of the geek-finding effort itself;)
If there are going to be movie reviews (adn TV shows? huh? Well I guess the same applies to them... ) here every week, they should be about movies like this -- quirky, less well-known, worthy, decent.
This is one I'd like to see based on this review, and I'd never heardd of it (well, I had heard the *title* but that doesn't mean much to me!).
Thanks Jon, now please find some more like it. I don't want to hear about how "Friends" is secretly about channeled Geek Aggression, or how Columbine influences "Malcolm in the Middle" or how great "Saving Private Ryan" is. (OK, ok, so you liked SPR. Great. So everyone fawns over that asanine Tom Hanks. Fine, but leave me out of it.)
A happy rant (this week) from someone sick of WWII movies and banal mainstream flicks being touted as particularly Geek-a-zoid. Not everyone who reads slashdot is a Geek-Jock who has to fit *everything* in the world into a few pre-approved, community-tested memes and attitudes. There are cool technical-themed movies to talk about which few people have heard of, as this review is proof -- so talk about those:)
gruntled for the moment,
simon
wtf should he need to be a "big fan" of that PoS?!
on
The Art Of The Matrix
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· Score: 3
eh, are you a 12-year old Geek Policeman of some sort, checking to make sure that everyone shares the same tastes and dogma?
The Matrix was a movie, not a religious text. I thought it was OK, but not the deeply moving experience some people make it out to be, and surely there are a lot of people who feel the same way.
Keanu Reeves is a bad actor. He may be a nice guy, a good friend, or an excellent lover (if you're of whatever sex he actually prefers, a point on which I have no information nor want any). He was thankfully saved from much acting by the quite-good special effects in The Matrix though, unlike in Much Ado About Nothing. I was afraid he might catch on fire whenever he was near torches in that one, but perhaps the wood he's carved from is still too green to really catch.
Bladerunner -- that's a good movie. Stack that against the Matrix any time. (On the other hand, The Matrix, like I said, is by no means the worst KR film -- that distinction would have to go to The Replacements (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0191397), which is also by the way the worst movie that Gene Hackman ever made.)
There probably is a whole subset of viewers who would have liked the Matrix a lot more (maybe even been "fans" to satisfy your need for Full Official Geek Conformance) if the acting had been as good as the effects, and if the whole "brain in a jar" idea was somewhat more novel. The Matrix does a good job of extending and stylizing that old thought experiment, but dammit it's just a classic bull-session topic, ok?!
On the other hand, perhaps you were joking, ironically pointing out preemptively that there really *are* people who seem to take it upon themselves to make sure that everyone thinks "correctly" about art / music / software / books / clothing / politics. In which case, I apologize for misinterpreting. But the thought police are out in force, and annoying, so now I've gone off.
"What? You mean you don't make a point of showing off how you worship caffiene? What kind of a Geek *are* you?!" "Here, wear this shirt, it has a cool formula on the back, and we all have one. This way you won't be a conformist like the jocks over there. Oh, and where's your trenchcoat?"
What kernel changes do you hope to see in future versions?
Not a facietious question!:) Many of the things I want for a smooth desktop experience I have been poking around to find out about, and I find that many of them are either part of 2.4 (even if not yet totally polished), or really application issues rather than kernel issues (And so developments on 2.5 don't have that much to do with them...) Support for USB devices like my external SmartMedia reader and HP 8200 CD-RW drive is in there, and support for a lot of USB scanners and other devices. More USB stuff will arrive* but the kernel infrastructure doesn't really seem like the problem.
Likewise, the "easy desktop" stuff seems more in the hands of the various window manager and desktop environment projects than in the kernel -- and they're doing a good job!:)
So I'm curious what kernel things you're thinking about. I certainly am more interested in Linux as a personal operating system than in servers, but it seems like a lot of the thresholds have moved up. The kernel can *already* handle most (currently) reasonable demands for personal computing, while the mondo systems of the world are now the ones that the kernel guys face as a challenge.
simon
*I'm not a USB fanatic, but I know this makes it sound that way;)
That's actually sort of a nice, off-beat, off-kilter, etc etc. name.
Ximian? Lunacy. Sheer Lunacy. Ximian would be a bad name *anyway* (sounds a little like perhaps a gaming company, maybe it would work for that), but "Helix Code" was the greatest name in recent computer industry history! Helix Code embodied many cool things -- good logo, clever word play which extended into the name of the product Evolution...
Ximian? "Hi. We're apelike, but we can't spell. Would you like us to install some software for you? No. Yes, of course we're serious."
Oh well.
I hope they do well, I do I do I do! But whoever thought of that name needs to atone publically for it. Miguel, please say you were sleeping at this meeting, or in the bathroom or something...
is that there are people who want to use Office, and other applications that MS makes, but who want / need to use non-MS operating systems.
With the Mac, they seem to have taken to heart that there are Mac users who aren't planning to switch any time soon to Windows. But there are also dedicated users of IRIX and other Unices... believe me, there are people who want to use Word *and* Linux (I'm not one).
If they make a UNIX-friendly Office (how close will the OS X version be?), seems like MS would have to intentionally cripple the software if they don't want at least some Linux users eventually getting it to work -- just look at the emulation work which has already happened *without* a UNIX-friendly version!
Well, you may be right, and (separate issue) Linus may agree;)
I hope not, though -- the conservative version numbering system so far employed has demonstrated restraint and non-craven humility... the diff. between 2.2 and 2.4 in terms of features (can't speak for performance personally yet, but all I hear is good so far:) ) is really amazing, and that's refreshing. It's craft, pride of workmanship and engineering over marketing, a rare triumph!
Now it might make sense, as some have suggested, to go straight to 3.0 from here -- ok, that I could live with, it's at least the next integer in line, and "three point oh" does have a nice ring to it. But to take the slackware leap would be ultimately futile -- if Linus calls the next kernel "Linux 7.0" then some distro will busily repackage all their disks with that kernel until they are called "Official DistroName Linux 8.5!"
Maybe some distro (Debian leaps out, for version-numbering reasons) should introduce a 3rd version number or add a letter.
And a conversation like this one could happen:
"Hey, whatcha runnin' there?"
"Debian 2.6"
"Yeah? 2.6.b?"
"No,.c -- that usb problem was cleared up, and now it's got XFree 4.5 by default."
(well, it will be when cultural anthropologists read this post in the year 5009...)
Of course, since everyone runs some Debian-based distro then, they will also wonder why their Earth calander of software history seems to be about 8 months off;)
Slashdot Mirror
"Oh, *shootings*! That doesn't mean that Americans are more violent than other people -- we're just better shots."
But the article (well, the quoted message) says it's "Kontour," and it sounds like that's the decision of the author ...
vektor / veKtor would have been a cool choice, though -- then KDE project folks could sue Adobe for infringing on their intuhlektural prahpuhty whenever they refer to their product as a "vector-based drawing program."
simon
"The distinguishing feature of wearables is that you can use them without taking them out of whatever you carry them in. Palms are designed to be always with you, but not always usable; you can't see where you're going and they take both hands."
OK, good point, but in the case of the charmed-in-a-bag, I still see this as "less wearable" than most other wearables because it's less integral to the wearer's body, more like a purse with a laptop. Yes, the IO is outside, and I agree that's the most important thing, but a bag that you have to drape over the back of your chair or whatever is a lot different (not worse, hey, I might prefer it) than one that's *attached* to you, even in the way that a vest like the MIThril is attached to you.
simon
The MIThril project has taken one tack with the wearable possibilities (integrating it into clothing) that most wearable projects have not. They clip on (Xybernaut), sit on back (the CMU one whose name I forget), or even become barely semi-wearable by being carried in a bag (charmed). (Still nice machines and all, just that I think "wearable" is a stretch as a distinguishing name for something not that much different from carrying around a Sony picturebook.)
;)
/good/ input systems (not sure what they would consist of, in truth, but the current choices are all Lesser Evils with some interesting compromises to choose among), I would love one of these for everyday use. Palm device is the answer for now, I suppose;)
The vest approach might seem strange and limiting compared to the more separately worn ones (hey, it might be warm for a vest, right?) but in reality, all the wearables available right now need batteries (lots of juice) and communications (bluetooth and similar aren't really widespread enough or useful enough), and it's all got to go *somewhere*
If it was a light enough mesh, a vest really might not be as limiting as I used to picture it, and by placing the stuff around a user's torso (usually adjudged pretty important to the user!) it probably gets more protection than it looks, just from natural self protection.
as computing power gets cheaper, GPS and other technologies spread, that vest could become a lot lighter, too. Now if only there were
simon
Right! ;)
OK, I give! Sorry to start out like the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons, that was uncivil and uncalled for. Someone else in this same thread (can't find now -- moderated too low?) seemed to say exactly what I *thought* (falsely) that you were saying, and I had a little knee jerk reaction of my own. (You should have seen my response before I tried to make it non-inflammatory;))
Mea culpa, and I apologize for the 8th-grade crack. I rather liked getting out of 8th grade myself (not a bad year, except for math class, really, but boy did I have some bad teachers), though you had a better vacation afterward from the sound of it.
Cheers and humility,
simon
Dictionary.com (fount of wisdom for we poor spellers) says "Sometime in the 19th century Arthur Roberts (1852-1933) invented a game called Spoof, which involved trickery and nonsense. The first recorded reference to the game in 1884 refers to its revival. It was not long before the word spoof took on the general sense "nonsense, trickery," first recorded in 1889. The verb spoof is first recorded in 1889 as well, in the sense "to deceive.""
You seem to have a certain, context-specific meaning stuck in your head. Fine. Words can have lots of context-specific meanings (check out the word "punk" for instance -- "The punk lit the punk, punk!"), but by having special meanings in some small corner of the world, they don't lose their larger, more general meanings.
In the context of this article, it would be entirely accurate to use the word "spoof" to describe a user faking age or location to get around the restrictions NV would like to impose.
Whether that's (morally) right or not is up to you, but jeesh, why the knee-jerk reaction? Hope you had a nice graduation from 8th grade, sorry about how you always got picked on, why take it out on people with a middlin' vocabulary?
simon
p.s.: Unless I misinterpreted what you were trying to say here, in which case forget it and laugh it off. :)
I dunno, seems like CmdrTaco has frequenly mentioned playing games on his windows partitions, Hemos too, and complaining that more games aren't available for linux. Fair enough, no?
/. shows remarkable restraint by *not* linking to them and sticking with what even lowly dialup users can see.
But "multimedia clips that were related to submissions" is something else -- maybe they didn't want those becuase they are unuseable for most people? (OS aside -- most people are on dialup.) They don't link to a lot of MPEG clips either, no matter how universal they are, right?
Reviewing games seems more like reviewing books and not parallel to "multimedia clips." I hate people sending attachments without asking, and I'd hate to have stories here link to a lot of multimedia files that would take forever to download. Maybe in a separate section ("Slashdot for High bandwidth"?) that would be good, but considering all the various parody songs, flash files etc that spring up, I think
Games for the most part get purchased like books do, and bandwidth / usability-over-the-net is not such a limiting factor. Seems OK to me.
(and I don't play games much either, but I like to see them reviewed here;))
simon
I don't run any servers (including Napster) on my machines right now, because of bandwidth, really, but also because I am afraid that my ISP (just one of the many which are now all part of Earthlink) will one day enforce its ToS re: servers. I'm online enough hours that I have drawn their tightlipped little notes before about it, and they hint that they think I'm running a server, so ... anyhow, keep my nose clean.
This clearly functions as a server, albeit one which it seems would probably *reduce* overall congestion (am I right on that?).
Anyone have constuctive / instructive experiences re: ToS with servers and dialup ISPs? This is one of the first things I've seen which tempts me to risk it;)
Cheers,
simon
p.s. oh, and the cola? It's not that bad. Sweet, but not disgustingly so like "Big Red" and certain others. Quite drinkable, and no stranger than Coke or coffee would be to someone who's tasted neither one.
Nope, they can't. The FAQ explains why, and it's sort of too bad, but ... they can't. It comes up once in a while, would be cool. Oh well.
simon
... is that one day MS will need to create versions of its software for Linux ;) (Or, insert your favorite Free, source-not-secret operating system -- "Word for Hurd"?)
If they don't, they will grow increasingly irrelevant. A decade? Three? Who knows! But a system built on keeping software secret, expensive, and always on the brink of expiry can only last in the absence of valid alternatives.
Those alternatives have not only arrived, but keep stripping off masks of perceived difficulty or non-intuitive design. (I say masks because I think they're mostly silly lip-wiggling, just the conventional wisdom repeated as Deep Conviction by the uninformed -- there are *no* really great, easy, attractive SW systems for the general user anyhow.)
Q: "Here, Sir -- a free, tiny non-polluting nuclear reactor you can keep forever and modify as you see fit, and even duplicate for others under certain reasonable terms. Enjoy! Is that OK?"
A: "Uhh, coal is better, and you are bad. All your base. American Way."
ramblingrumbling,
simon
the LED readout of the fluid temperature that librarygeek mentions is cool -- (or is it really LCD?). Either way, that should be a standard part of a decent case.
:) Matter of fact, that's the chief reason I would like to one day acquire a BeBox -- those dancing LEDs are worth more than the machine's current processing-power-money ratio.
:)
In fact, I'd like to see an LCD with a numeric output, and with a (green / yellow / orange / red) quad-bank of LEDS beneath it, for (easy / questionable / dangerous / stupid) temperature levels.
remember, there should be more LEDs, everywhere and in everything
Just like in a car, there isn't a true conflict between dummy lights and gauges -- please give us both!
simon
well, Mandrake now ships with KDE 2, which includes konqui, and it's the default browser under KDE. I thought RH had KDE2 as well ... how much more mainstream can it get? :)
simon
Peter Dyck said "Government consists of people who have to think about getting re-elected every four to eight years. It's a form of mutual assured destruction. Politicians who screw with us won't get elected the next time."
... every time one of those jerks double parks or blocks an ambulance entry with no penalty, the rest of us are belittled while they laugh; that several have been credibly accused or rape and other violent crimes but not touched because of their office is even worse.)
... heck, I bet the local quickie mart would love to sell you a 5-pack of marijuana cigarettes legally, let's say $10 for a nice package of guaranteed-quality pot, with lung-saving filter ... I digress.)
Well, in theory maybe. But consider that Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were both overwhelmingly reelected; probably most people who voted (or would have voted) for one of these guys probably would consider the other to be objectionable. Result? All screwed, all the time, news at 11.
Ted Kennedy (Oh, Ted) continues to be elected time after time despite -- and this is not what I'd like on my resume, but I guess for the Senate they have different admissions standards -- *drowing his date by driving off a bridge drunk*. You have to be at least 1 generation away from JFK laterally to actually come to trial for such things, evidently. (The laundry list of crimes and other objectionable acts committed by the current batch of miscreants in D.C. could make TV evangelism seem like a den of saints
Probably you have a "favorite" politician or two who clearly spends more time screwing (in whichever sense you find makes sense) than doing good, and gets elected again anyhow.
Electability is different from good done in office, by a very long way. Bread and circuses.
Added to which, most FCC and other agency bureacrats (the word may be pejorative, but I can think of no better one, and heck, I *mean* it pejorative!) aren't tied to the election cycle anyhow. Some of the top posts are, and there's a trickle down effect, but most Federal workers don't become unemployed based on the election cycle. Maybe they should -- we could require politicians to run on a ticket basis that goes beyond President and VP -- entire complete-government teams would be required, with a sudden-death phase, too. But as it stands, only the few offices near the top are true political appointments, and in some cases, even they survive administrations. They do know the ropes, (the ties that bind, so to speak).
And on Boycotts? Bus boycotts in Alabama which hastened desegregation. Not only that, but a bit like brandishing a weapon rather than actually firing it, sometimes a boycott only needs to exert enough pressure to win it's point, not bring the company to its knees. 7-11 no longer carries porn (thanks / no thanks -- your pick) thanks to long-term boycotts by religious groups. It's been a while, and 7-11 still doesn't carry 'em. I bet the boycotters could claim that as a victory. When's the last time a boycott against government worked? (And corporations don't draft people and send them to shoot people they might not be inclined to shoot, or send people to jail for possessing a marijuana seed
Anyhow.
simon
my much longer reply just got wiped out by a segfault, so this one is shorter for my own sanity and that of the reader ;)
... oh, Albania, North Korea, etc? Not that the FCC has dominion there ;) but they demonstrate why the government ought not be the real owner ("steward" isn't how I'd describe them) of the airwaves. Radio should be as unregulated as practical in the U.S. and other relatively free places for the same reason it should be but isn't in the obviously un-free places. *That's* where there are actual strangleholds on content that go beyond priggishness and artifical "two sides of story" dichotomies.
... Tibet, say, or Havana? I think so, but I may be crazy.
... shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits ... and 'tits' doesn't even belong on the list!", smile, and say "now you can say them on the radio!"
- jamie mccarthy said "no sane company would lessen its stranglehold of control anyway, unless forced to by the government."
Maybe, but doesn't that power-seeking also apply to the government? The U.S. govt. is one of the most liberal (old sense) on earth, in fact the U.S. govt in fact probably comes closer than any other I can think of as perhaps an adequate / worthwhile one to regulate broadcasting. But consider that this government (no not a monolith, but enough of a coherent whole I think it bears this abuse fairly) loves to spy on its own citizens at several levels (and always pushes to expand this little privilege), violently apprehends the use and users of *certain* recreational substances, and speaking of radio, threatens stations whose content the FCC doesn't like with license withdrawal, fines, etc.
In effect, the big corporations already own the airwaves (since they can afford lawyers, licenses, transmitters) with some small and carefully allowed exceptions, because the FCC is establishmentarian as any govt agency. Despite a few years of softer talk on it, the FCC still raids and confiscates the equipement of even tiny stations transmitting in local dead air and thus not interfering with anyone else's broadcast. (that's maybe my favorite illustrative evil deed of the FCC -- not only pointless, but destructive of liberty and a great discouragement to involvement.) Authority likes to assert itself and grow, the arrogance of power, etc etc.
More important -- But what about in countries like
Wouldn't it be nice if one (or better, two or three!) of the horrible corporations would start broadcasting news, music and weather on the eights with updates on the hour in
And there are anti-monopoly laws, total-power output rules etc that there's no reason to think would be changed by this (whatever you think of those laws, heh); Basically this little privatization plan sounds like trading one form of govt/private radio system (the current one) for a slightly more free market one, rather than declaring radio anarchy outright, gutting small children who stand in the way, etc.
simon
p.s. secondary motivation would be to wake up, turn on radio, hear "
That Clawhammer will be smaller than a P4 sounds nice, but not all that relevant to me in the near future (trying to be more trailing edge than bleeding edge in the interest of my wallet of late;)).
What does interest me is the idea that the equivalent to today's highest-end-and-beyond chips will be be smaller packages. OK, ok, that's an obvious point given the March of Progress thus far, right? But when it comes to *lower* powered devices, this is particularly cool, because they're going to be even smaller.
Remember, the power in an iPaq handheld would have been the Computer Buyer's Holy Grail not long ago, and it's only in comparison with the amazingly powerful processors available lo even at WalMart that it appears wimpy. Not long from now, you will be able to buy a computer over the salesperson's objection that "b-b-b-b-but that's only the power equivalent of a Pentium 4 at 3 Ghz! You'll never get Office 2004 to run on *that*!"
Really, though I like the convenience of the various plug-in buses of desktop PCs, I really wish my PC case could be more the size of a laptop, and getting processors, motherboards, etc smaller would be a nice step toward (at least household) ubiquity.
simon
these reviews paired is interesting in part because one is (uhh ....) RH-based ;) and the other is Debian-based.
... (are there more?)
...)
A few years ago, and barring Slackware, it seemed liked all commercial distros were based on Red hat, and probably most still are.
Are we at an inflection point? Now at least 4 slick commericial distros have emerged that are based on Debian: Corel (ick, though that's based on the first version); Stormix (deceased 2001, alas); Progeny (looks good to me, but haven't run); LibraNet
Maybe the convenience of apt-get will win over the current dominance of RPMs; if Mandrake and RH weren't now RPM compatible again (allegedly) I would see that happening even faster. (And mandrake's cooker thing even *has* apt-get
Interesting times;)
simon
pollo2 said --
:) In fact, they'd probably be happy for you to do so, if only to get more people to see their distribution. But for downloading it from one site (theirs, that is), they want some return on the bills they pay for bandwidth and servers etc. You can provide a mirror of GPL'd software and you aren't *required* to charge people for it. But there are costs associated with it, and they're trying to recoup ... if it helps them stay in business (who knows?) then it sounds like a good thing.
'"Free software is about freedom, not price. Free software means that users have certain freedoms, such as the freedom to redistribute and change the software. To charge for a copy is legitimate; this is just as true for downloading as for a CD-ROM." ""
Yadda yadda... IMHO it's also perfectly legal to pay 15$, download the distro and redistribute it for free.'
Well yes, it is!
simon
(that'd be anothe r good one to see some more reviews of.)
:) Without him, they'd have to just call it Deb!
that's "better debian than debian" and with the approval / leadership / etc. of Ian Murdoch -- so what more could you want?
It would be an interesting kink in the graph if debian-based distros start to actually dominate. Even the fact that there *are* multiple debian-based distros is an intersting kink in the graph.
simon
This is a cool review to see on slashdot! I'm not a huge fan of the Hollywood fare that Katz somtimes does his damnedest to find a "geek" element ... and I'm even less of a fan of the geek-finding effort itself;)
... ) here every week, they should be about movies like this -- quirky, less well-known, worthy, decent.
:)
If there are going to be movie reviews (adn TV shows? huh? Well I guess the same applies to them
This is one I'd like to see based on this review, and I'd never heardd of it (well, I had heard the *title* but that doesn't mean much to me!).
Thanks Jon, now please find some more like it. I don't want to hear about how "Friends" is secretly about channeled Geek Aggression, or how Columbine influences "Malcolm in the Middle" or how great "Saving Private Ryan" is. (OK, ok, so you liked SPR. Great. So everyone fawns over that asanine Tom Hanks. Fine, but leave me out of it.)
A happy rant (this week) from someone sick of WWII movies and banal mainstream flicks being touted as particularly Geek-a-zoid. Not everyone who reads slashdot is a Geek-Jock who has to fit *everything* in the world into a few pre-approved, community-tested memes and attitudes. There are cool technical-themed movies to talk about which few people have heard of, as this review is proof -- so talk about those
gruntled for the moment,
simon
eh, are you a 12-year old Geek Policeman of some sort, checking to make sure that everyone shares the same tastes and dogma?
The Matrix was a movie, not a religious text. I thought it was OK, but not the deeply moving experience some people make it out to be, and surely there are a lot of people who feel the same way.
Keanu Reeves is a bad actor. He may be a nice guy, a good friend, or an excellent lover (if you're of whatever sex he actually prefers, a point on which I have no information nor want any). He was thankfully saved from much acting by the quite-good special effects in The Matrix though, unlike in Much Ado About Nothing. I was afraid he might catch on fire whenever he was near torches in that one, but perhaps the wood he's carved from is still too green to really catch.
Bladerunner -- that's a good movie. Stack that against the Matrix any time. (On the other hand, The Matrix, like I said, is by no means the worst KR film -- that distinction would have to go to The Replacements (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0191397), which is also by the way the worst movie that Gene Hackman ever made.)
There probably is a whole subset of viewers who would have liked the Matrix a lot more (maybe even been "fans" to satisfy your need for Full Official Geek Conformance) if the acting had been as good as the effects, and if the whole "brain in a jar" idea was somewhat more novel. The Matrix does a good job of extending and stylizing that old thought experiment, but dammit it's just a classic bull-session topic, ok?!
On the other hand, perhaps you were joking, ironically pointing out preemptively that there really *are* people who seem to take it upon themselves to make sure that everyone thinks "correctly" about art / music / software / books / clothing / politics. In which case, I apologize for misinterpreting. But the thought police are out in force, and annoying, so now I've gone off.
"What? You mean you don't make a point of showing off how you worship caffiene? What kind of a Geek *are* you?!" "Here, wear this shirt, it has a cool formula on the back, and we all have one. This way you won't be a conformist like the jocks over there. Oh, and where's your trenchcoat?"
simon
edwarddes:
:) Many of the things I want for a smooth desktop experience I have been poking around to find out about, and I find that many of them are either part of 2.4 (even if not yet totally polished), or really application issues rather than kernel issues (And so developments on 2.5 don't have that much to do with them ...) Support for USB devices like my external SmartMedia reader and HP 8200 CD-RW drive is in there, and support for a lot of USB scanners and other devices. More USB stuff will arrive* but the kernel infrastructure doesn't really seem like the problem.
:)
What kernel changes do you hope to see in future versions?
Not a facietious question!
Likewise, the "easy desktop" stuff seems more in the hands of the various window manager and desktop environment projects than in the kernel -- and they're doing a good job!
So I'm curious what kernel things you're thinking about. I certainly am more interested in Linux as a personal operating system than in servers, but it seems like a lot of the thresholds have moved up. The kernel can *already* handle most (currently) reasonable demands for personal computing, while the mondo systems of the world are now the ones that the kernel guys face as a challenge.
simon
*I'm not a USB fanatic, but I know this makes it sound that way;)
That's actually sort of a nice, off-beat, off-kilter, etc etc. name.
...
...
Ximian? Lunacy. Sheer Lunacy. Ximian would be a bad name *anyway* (sounds a little like perhaps a gaming company, maybe it would work for that), but "Helix Code" was the greatest name in recent computer industry history! Helix Code embodied many cool things -- good logo, clever word play which extended into the name of the product Evolution
Ximian? "Hi. We're apelike, but we can't spell. Would you like us to install some software for you? No. Yes, of course we're serious."
Oh well.
I hope they do well, I do I do I do! But whoever thought of that name needs to atone publically for it. Miguel, please say you were sleeping at this meeting, or in the bathroom or something
simon
is that there are people who want to use Office, and other applications that MS makes, but who want / need to use non-MS operating systems.
... believe me, there are people who want to use Word *and* Linux (I'm not one).
With the Mac, they seem to have taken to heart that there are Mac users who aren't planning to switch any time soon to Windows. But there are also dedicated users of IRIX and other Unices
If they make a UNIX-friendly Office (how close will the OS X version be?), seems like MS would have to intentionally cripple the software if they don't want at least some Linux users eventually getting it to work -- just look at the emulation work which has already happened *without* a UNIX-friendly version!
simon
Well, you may be right, and (separate issue) Linus may agree;)
... the diff. between 2.2 and 2.4 in terms of features (can't speak for performance personally yet, but all I hear is good so far :) ) is really amazing, and that's refreshing. It's craft, pride of workmanship and engineering over marketing, a rare triumph!
.c -- that usb problem was cleared up, and now it's got XFree 4.5 by default."
I hope not, though -- the conservative version numbering system so far employed has demonstrated restraint and non-craven humility
Now it might make sense, as some have suggested, to go straight to 3.0 from here -- ok, that I could live with, it's at least the next integer in line, and "three point oh" does have a nice ring to it. But to take the slackware leap would be ultimately futile -- if Linus calls the next kernel "Linux 7.0" then some distro will busily repackage all their disks with that kernel until they are called "Official DistroName Linux 8.5!"
Maybe some distro (Debian leaps out, for version-numbering reasons) should introduce a 3rd version number or add a letter.
And a conversation like this one could happen:
"Hey, whatcha runnin' there?"
"Debian 2.6"
"Yeah? 2.6.b?"
"No,
Just a thought,
simon
(well, it will be when cultural anthropologists read this post in the year 5009 ...)
Of course, since everyone runs some Debian-based distro then, they will also wonder why their Earth calander of software history seems to be about 8 months off;)
simon